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Guide dog robot—its basic plan and some experiments with Meldog Mark I

1981; Elsevier BV; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0094-114x(81)90046-x

1873-3999

Susumu Tachi, K. Tanie, Kyoshi KOMORIYA, Yuuji Hosoda, Minoru Abe,

Robotic Path Planning Algorithms

One of the strong desires of more than a quarter of a million blind persons in Japan is orientation and/or mobility. This project of a guide dog robot, which we call MELDOG after Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, has just started to help the blind walk more safely by applying the techniques of robotics and man-machine system. The function of a guide dog is composed of two parts: namely, obedience, which corresponds to the guidance, and intelligent disobedience, which corresponds to the obstacle detection. We are aiming at the realization of these functions by machines. In order to realize the guide dog robot system a designer has to solve four problems. He has to make the robot move along the street and let it know its position and orientation, to establish the communication between the blind person (master) and the robot (guidance of the master), to detect obstacle or dangerous situation, and to construct the organized map of streets for the robot. We started from the second problem, and so far made an experimental hardware and realized the communication between the master and the robot successfully. In this paper the basic plan of MELDOG and some experiments using this experimental hardware are reported. The robot proceeds in front of the master and is controlled so that its speed is the same as that of the master, keeping the distance between them constant of 1 m. The safety zone is set, in which the master is permitted to walk. When he is out of the zone, the robot warns him using electrocutaneous stimulation. L'orientation et/ou la mobilité constituent l'un des ardents désirs de plus d'un quart de million d'aveugles au Japon. Ce mémoire décrit l'étude et l'expérimentation du concept "chien-robot servant de guide dénommé Meldog". Ce robot dont le nom vient de Mechanical Engineering Laboratory a commencé à aider des personnes aveugles à marcher avec plus de sécurité en appliquant les techniques de l'automatique et les systèmes homme/machine.